In reply to Error404 :
I've never had a 40 hr a week job. 50+ is probably average.
But I also spent many of my single younger self years with a few weeks off after several weeks of 6-7, 12-14 hr days per week. With $1.00 up to $2.00 gas costs, and groceries about 1/4 of current, it kept me in very low middle income bracket.
Don't know if I'll ever see above poverty level again.
I was blessed with a "no more stress than usual" job during covid; but then, I was making less than a lot of folks complaining that they were not being paid enough to sit at home. So it was a mixed blessing.
I make just under 100K a year, can come and go pretty much as I please, my boss is in Virginia ( I am in Ohio ) and its low stress. I could leave and get a higher paycheck but so far the higher pay does not outweigh the benefits of the current job.
If I made that kind of money I wouldn't brag about it. Especially not in a bar.
There's nurses I work with right now, that during COVID were pulling more than the CEOs of some hospitals in traveling and overtime pay. That's gone now, but an RN with their Critical Care certs working as a traveler can pull 6 figures easily. Personally, My goal is more NP; to me that's the best mix of "I get to run my own E36 M3" and "I wasn't in school for 12 years" and "I'm not actively drowning in medical debt" while also being in that 6-figure category.
But right now, I'm a paramedic making $21/hr and it's hard to push for more and better in life when I'm working 36 hours/week for my full time job, and "Working" 50+ for school full time each week. I own my own home, but sadly back on the car payment debt train.
GameboyRMH said:
He then argued that one upside to a highly specialized career was freedom, which puzzled me, but then he revealed to me a manner of working that I didn't think possible when working for another company outside of the C-suite: that as a highly specialized nuclear engineer, he only had to work about 2 hours per day, entirely from home. I don't know how much he was making but he was able to own a nice house and a nice car and support a family, including leaving his wife free to do whatever she wants - IIRC she was selling artworks on Etsy. This was in the thick of the pandemic when my work day consisted of at least 8 hours of nonstop fast-paced panic that left me with a level of chronic mental exhaustion I'm still not sure I've recovered from, and while the pay isn't bad it's not property-owning money in today's world. And here this guy was quietly living a solarpunk lifestyle in a cyberpunk world. Just blew my mind.
This is making me mad that I never pursued going nuke like I had considered back in high school through the Navy.
Though to be frank, it was because several guys who were in the navy for nuke said don't go nuke but still.
The idea of buying drinks for everyone in a bar like that seems kinda sad to me.
It's like... you spend so much of your time shut away making money that you don't have a practical use for. So instead, you use it to make it feel like a bunch of strangers are your friends.
Beer Baron said:
No, but I don't think having more money would make me appreciably happier. More like equally happy with slightly fancier versions of the stuff I already have.
Time > Money
I want a new job that earns me more money, but mostly I want to relocate to be near my brother, and he lives someplace with a higher cost of living.
There is definitely a point of diminishing returns on the money vs happiness scale. Some people will be miserable no matter what they have, and some become worse because any amount will never be enough. At some point more money just means you have more crap to deal with. Money can not buy time, but it can buy convenience (flying private, paying someone to do stuff you don't want to do, etc.). Not having money sucks a lot more than having too much though. That being said, most people here are above the average, and I'm pretty sure there are a few above the $50k a month club.
In reply to Beer Baron :
Maybe he did it for himself ? Not everyone is in a position to buy a round of drinks for an entire bar. Maybe never again. To say you were able to do it, even once, is that such a bad thing?
He used to make good money:
This just reminds me to raise my hourly rates.
Best I have done it $22.5/mo. That was working 13 hour shifts over night (+10%), 7 days a week. 103Hours of OT every pay period (2 weeks), and ~$2100/mo in untaxed per diem. This was in 2020 two separate trips to S. CA totaling about 5 months. I made more money that year, by far, than I have in my life. I had 1240hrs of OT for the year and 9 months on the road.
The highlight of the year was the Coronaball Run there and back in my Cayman. I went the speed limit because police were not pulling people over...
Peabody said:
Come to Ontario. I just looked on indeed. 600 millwright jobs in my area and even the food/bakeries are paying in the $40's/hr
This is a perfect example of lacking context. Look at the average home price or rent in Ontario. What do the benefits outside of your hourly rate look like? What are the payroll taxes there vs various states in the US, which can vary widely, not just because of national healthcare, but a few of the big counties and cities in this country have additional income taxes on top of state income taxes, etc.
Many others have addressed the lack of stress/hours worked. I have built a pretty good reputation at my current place, and while I feel I'm a bit underpaid compared to where I should be, I really don't want to trade it in for a high stress job, where I work many more hours for $15-20k more per year.
But I find it better not to spend my time comparing myself to these outliers and realize especially for where I live, the fiance and I make pretty good money.
In reply to z31maniac :
I used to make good money for my area. Somehow it changed and I cannot afford a house within 30 mins of my work. I lose 3 hours a day getting to work mostly in traffic.
There is a 18-20% raise soon thank goodness.
preach (dudeist priest) said:
In reply to z31maniac :
I used to make good money for my area. Somehow it changed and I cannot afford a house within 30 mins of my work. I lose 3 hours a day getting to work mostly in traffic.
There is a 18-20% raise soon thank goodness.
This is one of things keeping us in OKC, we both work from home and will continue to do so, and we have no desire to be house poor. Our mortgage is currently around 11% of our take home pay. At our current income, any other large city we would want to move to would put us much further away from the downtown center of said imaginary city and we'd likely have to triple our mortgage or more.
